Once Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing what he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Tzu. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.*
#dailywalk, #pilgrimsprogress: 12,492 steps, 4.8 miles
*Translation by Burton Watson. #chuangtzu #butterfly

"We read in the Chuang-tzu: [..] Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."

~ from "Zen and Japanese Culture" by Daisetz T. Suzuki

#Zen #japan #chuangtzu

Re-reading A.C. Graham’s scholarly translation of #ChuangTzu #Zhuangzi I’m reminded that there’s evidence of a strain of anti-imperialist thought in ancient China. “Throughout the literature of the third and second centuries BC, the reign of Shen-nung represents a distinctive political idea, unlike those of Confucians, Taoists, or any other well documented school. It has the look of a peasant utopia; everyone is required to support himself by his own labour…”
#politics #anarchism #Daoism

I'm reading Giles's Chuang Tzu on an e-book reader. The wait screens show great pencil drawings of gears and buildings, but the most fascinating one is of a little house at the foot of a mountain. A Japanese #老子 LaoTzu book (by #蜂屋邦夫) mentions ch80's ideal appearing in a #ChuangTzu episode. Had me wondering what a #はねつるべ is. The "well-sweep" in the picture of the hut in the BOOKS drawing! Ironic to see it between drawings of gears and a clocktower, given the moral of the episode.

> ... splendour of the heavenly bodies is dimmed.. energy of land and water is disturbed.. influence of the four seasons is destroyed.. not one tiny creature.. moves on earth or flies in air but becomes other.. it should be. So overwhelming is the confusion which desire for knowledge has brought.. The simple and the guileless have been set aside; the specious and the false have been exalted.. confusion come upon the world. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59709
#HerberGiles's #ChuangTzu on gutenberg! #Climate

Chancing on this Oscar Wilde review of an old translation of Chuang Tzu makes me want to learn to write a quote-a-day bot. But how?
> #Morality is, of course, a different thing. It went out of fashion, says #ChuangTzu, when people began to moralize. Men ceased then to be spontaneous and to act on intuition. They became priggish and artificial, and were so blind as to have a definite purpose in life.
https://www.online-literature.com/wilde/a-critic/39/
#荘子 #OscarWilde #LaoTzu #Witty

> Wilde was.. intrigued.. Like teenage #LeGuin.. in #LaoTzu, Wilde saw a#RabbleRouser in #ChuangTzu: “He would be disturbing at dinner-parties, and impossible at afternoon teas.”.. #HeidiCParton point[s to] #OscarWilde’s famous.. quips [that] would be.. familiar to a #Taoist:
#ChuangTzu wrote, “What starts out being sincere usually ends up being deceitful.”.. Oscar Wilde put it, “A little #sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
https://bookriot.com/lets-talk-about-ursula-k-le-guin-oscar-wilde-and-taoism/

#蜂屋邦夫 の #老子 にも
#荘子 の #天地編 が 登場します。 これで私は「荘子」を読みたくなりました。そしてJohn Berger の Pig Earth という 小説が思い浮べました。

#ChuangTzu #peasant #farmer #gardener #百姓

> 仕掛道具が作られると必ずたくらみごとが行われるようになる。たくらみごとが行われるようになると必ず知巧を弄するたくらみ心が起ってくる。たくらみ心が胸中に生じると人間の純粋潔白な本来の心は害(ｿｺﾅ)われ、本来の純粋潔白さが害われると霊妙な生の営みはかき乱されて不安定となる。霊妙な生のいとなみが不安定になれば、根源的な真理はもはや彼の生活を支えなくなってしまうのだ
https://konton88.exblog.jp/17412227/
#荘子 #天地編 #ChuangTzu #peasant #farmer #gardener #百姓
#VictorHMair mentions the translation by #福永光司
http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp048_chuangtzu_zhuangzi.pdf

> 機械ある者は必ず機事あり。
機事ある者は必ず機心あり。
機心胸中に存すれば、すなわち純白備わらず。

https://www.weblet21.com/blog/2008/01/post_147.html

#荘子 #天地編 #ChuangTzu #peasant #farmer #gardener #百姓

> Do you know what those machines are for?
> They plough, they turn hay, they spread dung, they milk—it depends, answered Nicole.
> There’s one job they all do.
> He looked into her eyes with the utmost seriousness. For all their experience, Nicole’s eyes were innocent.. but they had never seen men poring over a map and drawing up a plan.
> Their job is to wipe us out.
#JohnBerger in #PigEarth #tractor #PeasantOnMachines #荘子 #天地編 #ChuangTzu #farmer #gardener
https://archive.org/details/sacredbookschin00legggoog/page/n347/mode/2up

> .. the original Chines.. could equally well be taken to refer to a woman. #UrsulaKLeGuin solves this ambiguity admirably by keeping her translation #GenderFree.
Unlike #ChuangTzu and #LiehTzu, the other two classics of the philosophical (non-shamanic) school of #Taoism, #laotzu contains no names, places or dates. It scarcely mentions objects or living things. It recounts no.. conversations, tells no stories, and refers to no other books.
https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/notes.html
#HannahArendt on #Thinking?

You never find happiness until you stop looking for it
#ChuangTzu